“Coming Out of the internet”: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet as a “Digital Closet” in Turkey

This article focuses on the Internet as a “digital closet” in the context of Turkish lesbian and gay activism in the 1990s and early 2000s. In its analysis of media and sexual discourse, the article first discusses traditional media, such as the printing press and television. While the printing press and political reforms during the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish republic silenced sexual discourses, television brought them back as part of the new gender regime and disseminated a gender “deviance” model of homosexuality. Against this background, the rest of the article analyzes the metaphor of the Internet as a digital closet as it relates to collegiate lesbian and gay activism. The conclusion reflects on the significance and functions of this media metaphor for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and transsexual agency and subjectivities in Turkey, suggesting similar venues of research regarding sexuality and the Arab Spring in the Middle East.